


Unyielding Force

by CommanderBuizel



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Devaron, First Galactic Empire, Forests, Galactic Empire, Gen, Jedi Temple, Science Fiction, Stormtrooper, Tropical Planet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 05:22:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8520109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderBuizel/pseuds/CommanderBuizel
Summary: Even in the distant reaches of the Outer Rim the Galactic Empire flourishes. Economics, military, culture,all united across the galaxy under one flag, with only one force of opposition: the so-called "Rebel Alliance". The Rebels who claim to be the heralders of the ancient religion known as 'The Force' despite the Force's followers being the cause for the fall of the Republic. On a distant planet, home to a rich history with the Republic and the Jedi, the trivial investigations into their temples by a worn and tired Rebellion sympathiser reveals that the Force has selected a new protege. A new young body and mind for its powers to attempt to influence and to lend its power to. Of course, this new face of the Force's will must join the cause of the Rebellion, mustn't they? Their journey, both to discover their own abilities and to join the side that they must, and even to discover just which side that is, is chronicled as they attempt to trek to a Rebel base with the hopes of joining, regardless of their own will to do so.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I first must apologize for precisely how long this chapter is, I am aware that this is... rather extensive. In fact, the Google Doc that it was originally written on is nearly 25 pages for the first chapter on its own. Now this of course brings up some questions about the length of this story, and in fact this chapter was initially projected to be twice as long as this is less than half of the plot I intended to express in this chapter. So... I decided to end it early to not make it too painful for my readers, and in the future I will try to keep some chapters shorter. 
> 
> I appreciate any and all feedback that I can get from this as well. I would rather prefer that it mostly be given in the comments, as I would like to communicate to some degree with my readers and converse about what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong. 
> 
> This story does have a direction, mind you. I have most of it planned out and while not much actually transpires in this chapter that doesn't mean that there's not plot to this and it's just me rambling into the abyss about nothing. I will be beginning work on the second chapter rather soon, but I want to get a better reign on a few other characters. However, if you like this, rest assured that it is currently my forefront project and most of my effort will be used in it. 
> 
> Supposing you would like to read from the Google Doc with it's origional formating, the link is as follows:  
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xxR4DulnEjQlKWL7LsksKCiruaIRm0QhlPj_B72lzzs/edit
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoy

Nothing was harder to neglect during the morning, especially after one had ventured far enough into the dense forests and marshes that so plentifully populated the planet’s surface, than the cry of native avians. While they were always one of the most common sect of species across the galaxy, the idea and capacity of flight through a device as simple as a collection of feathers seeming to be a favorite of the evolutionary processes that had resulted in the impossibly uncountable plethora of variations upon the concept of life across the galaxy, Devaron’s tropical environments heralded itself to a very specific species of flying creatures. Their cries were the most notable aspect of them; the dense foliage often making them difficult to spot, and the need for camouflage in a tropical environment such as this making the recognition of them possibly more difficult than even simply seeing them. While the cry of these alien avians may be the equivalent of a diamond found among grains of sand for a seasoned bird watcher, the indigenous peoples seemed less enthralled about the rather constant shrieking that, for one reason or another, the local avian creatures thought was more important than the sleep of more intelligent local species. The aforementioned intelligent creatures had grown to accept the cries of the avians as a part of their daily life, however often the sounds would stir them from their rests far too early in the morning—the few who could not adjust had moved to the few large cities that dotted the planet’s surface. 

Despite all impressions one might get from the almost isolated planet of Daveron, the few cities it harbored were thriving urban centers that Palpatine himself would smile upon should he ever have the free time to visit a world so far on the outer rim. From orbit, the planet looked almost as if it was completely composed of the forests it was so famous for; even it’s oceans and lakes not particularly visible in comparison to the green flora that tinted the planet’s color from outside of its atmosphere. It appeared as a deep green; ranging from a light sage to a deep juniper, and occasionally bordering on shades of pine. These colors reflecting the density of the forests across the planet, as deeper colors corresponded to areas of the planet, spanning millions of square kilometers, with richer flora, more exotic and larger trees and plant life. The healthy, lively green even moved to color the clouds in the planet’s atmosphere, which was also a feature easily noticed from the planet’s orbit. There were many colonists, unfamiliar with the native species despite what political influence they had held over the past several millennia , who believed that the discoloration of the clouds was an issue of mixing gases in the atmosphere, and that the planet was polluted. However, after the observation of native cultures, even the governor the Empire had put in charge of the system assured those beyond that the abundance of green visible from all corners of the planet was a mere aspect of the planet’s tropical charm. 

Despite how much the galaxy’s population of Humans—those who had sworn themselves to the Empire, those who had sworn to the Rebellion, and those who scorned the war in its entirely—and their enthrallment with tropical and exotic environments, Devaron was far from a common tourist destination. Many of those who were local to the planet had failed to understand this for millennia, since the planet had first held it’s space in the Galactic Republic, yet they never quite bothered to question it—taking pride in the privacy that had allowed their planet to thrive prior to the advent of space travel, and those who lived on the planet despite not being of the native species finding the sights they were able to take in exponentially more special. More unique. After all, with so much of the planet uninhabited even by its native species, and so few of those from anywhere else finding their way there, it let every extra person, hiding among the infinite expanse of trees that the planet was practically soaked in, act and feel as if they existed in a microscopic universe that they could allow to revolve around none other than themselves. In a world where wildlife teemed from every piece of wood that grew from the ground, equating to nearly 18,000,000,000 creatures drawing oxygen for breath at any given moment, it was important for one to take a fair amount of time to simply relax and try to enjoy their perceived concept of a comfortable solitude. The fact that tourism was such a foreign concept made this all the easier among the intelligent species who were aware of their relation with the rest of the cosmos, and required to take this moment of seclusion. 

However important to the mental state of the space-faring races that walked the surface of Devaron its lack of tourism was, it’s plentiful destinations and attractions made those who had experienced more of the galaxy wonder if the planet’s dangerous wildlife was truly a reason to not visit the planet more often. While many, when referring to the planet’s ‘attractions’ would refer to its luscious forests, majestic beaches, or diverse and colorful wildlife, there were some who referred more to the remnants of Devaron’s cultural significance prior to the rise of the Empire, and in some cases even before the height of the Old Republic. Examples among cities had many of these remnants. Official insignias of the Republic were removed after the rise of the Empire, but structurally and culturally one could still see the influence it had nearly twenty years ago—with native Deveronians far more open to the rest of the galaxy than most alien creatures on the outer rim, and the infrastructure far more complex than one would ever assume could be achieved on an overpopulated jungle planet, so saturated in jungles and rainforests as this one. 

To one unfamiliar with the more unique aspects of Devaron, this alone may be all one would require in order to bring themselves to visit. Supposing they could push their minds to repress the idea that nearly any wildlife littered among the trees could likely see to it that our hypothetical tourist’s exploration will end among those trees; their body as hidden and unobservable as the predatory creatures that had left them buried among overgrown bushes. But those who stayed for longer each found their own joy in the exotic beauty of the planet, however deeply such a treasure may find itself hidden in the webs of branches, grass, and moss that intricately connected, intertwined, and mingled. To some, this symbiosis was its own diamond in the rough; the way that the trees, forests, jungles, and creatures each operated as if they were a singular entity. To others, beauty came from the wildlife on its own; numerous colorful reptiles and avians circling aimlessly in the dense ecosystems of trees, comparable to what a Human would dub ‘pine’, or ‘oak’, or ‘palm’—instead spoken in the native language of the intelligent lifeforms who had believed themselves superior enough to the rest of their planet to claim its name, the Devaronians. Once more, this species was its own gem to behold whether they reside in the jungles and forests or the urban cities that had to carve their way through the natural environment. The Devaronians had constructed a primarily matriarchal culture, the females of their race holding most positions of power, and at the very least are more often respected than women of races such as the Twi’Lek most often are. Visitors from the various other systems that dotted the galaxy, whether they be Imperial Soldiers, journalists, archaeologists, historians, writers, or even the occasional Rebel Soldier, many could not resist the culture and the mere personality of Devaron’s favorite children. 

And yet among the possibly uncountable mysteries and hidden treasures that sprinkled all across the planet, as if a planet devourer had been sure to sprinkle their favorite spice evenly across the surface but being sure to leave a generous amount of space balanced in between so that they could get plenty of the unadulterated taste of the planet’s surface, was a whole separate set of spices. Rarities hidden among the trees so seldom discovered, that a potential discoverers of these places would have a better chance of allocating such a massive amount of stable Astatine 210 that they would be able to construct their own version of this structure. These temples were often overlooked by natives, who had lived in ignorance of their origins for uncountable millennia, since their original denizens had moved to the planet Coruscant generations before the modern Devaron was even a twinkle in the eye of one of its natives. 

The Jedi Temples. Massive stone structures constructed before most species had developed the capacity to comprehend a language. Created by those who were sensitive to the connection that flowed through all life, and were able to communicate between one another through their connections to this life force alone, and guided their species towards a greater world and a greater galaxy. The Jedi, who were most often born with their connection to the force, were intergalactic peacekeepers, but before certain species could traverse the cosmos, their Jedi could only protect a singular planet. This is what the Jedi temples on Devaron most often were; that of localized Force users who were a guiding hand over the shoulder of the varied life that teemed from every nook and cranny of the planet. Like many Jedi temples, aside from the one that had been repurposed into the Imperial Capital on Coruscant, the ones that were dotted across the planet surface of Devaron were overgrown with plant life; their stone tained a dull yellowish color by the hand of the planet it resided on; hollow and empty. Seldom even winds would bend down the corridors that were once walked by the most gifted individuals that Devaron was capable of giving life to. 

It was impossible to differentiate these temples to the untrained or inexperienced eye. One could even visit each temple the planet had to offer a dozen times over without accurately being able to tell the difference between each of them, and even the trees around the temples seemed to grow in a similar fashion; each seaming like the flora around had not been cut down or removed, but as though they simply leaned out of the way to allow room for a Jedi temple among the foliage. Likely, when the temple was being constructed, the Force users who had constructed it had used such powers to move the forest passively so as to remain one with it but allow room for the heavy stone supporting what had been their home for nearly two thousand years.   
This was not to say that no eye could discern the difference between them; that the cracks or the moss weren’t different between them each. Yet these eyes were so rare and so far between, and forced to be so quiet with their knowledge by the hand of the Empire, that the average denizen of the galaxy would have no knowledge that these eyes, or the temples they had so trained to properly admire, even existed. Even so, on the rare occasion that such eyes would be brought to these temples, and on the even rarer one when they would bring one less experienced, the way that the Empire had caused its citizens to grow often lead their reaction to these ancient monoliths to be little other than apathetic. 

One such pair stood on the steps of one of Devaron’s temples; the eyes of one more experienced admiring and analyzing the doorway, while his plus one finding far more to marvel at in the forest that she looked out upon, sitting at the top of the stairs leading into the temple. Both of her hands rested behind her; her palms as flat as they could be against the stone of the stairway into the ancient structure so as to support her arms and in turn hold her body up so that she was capable of leaning back and relaxing her spine, so as to not develop aching pains from slouching over in wait for the man investigating the temple behind her to finish his studies of its architecture. The sun was of little consequence to either, as it was rather early in the day, and the sun was on the other side of the temple soas to cast a large shadow over the explorers. Over the course of several minutes, words of small talk driften between them passively; the older man trying to fill the void of silence between them, only filled by the sounds of the wilderness that felt itself entitled enough to take part in all conversations happening under the blanket of its atmosphere. However the girl, or perhaps in her own mind, the woman, intentionally kept her words brief—rather enjoying her conversation with the sounds of the ecosystem more than with that of her companion.   
Loitering at the entrance, he would only turn his eyes away from the intricate decay of the concrete, and the plants growing between the cracks, in order to attempt to sway his traveling partner to join him when we eventually travels through the arch they both rested beneath. To venture within the ancient structure, home to cultures and ideas lost millennia ago. Without a beat she would politely decline; not moving her face away from the view of the forest sprawled out before her and making it clear in the tone of her voice that she had no intent of continuing the conversation further or entertaining the idea. In fact, her tone made it almost sound as if she was not present at all. As if her mind had been raised into the same hazy fog that veiled so much from view in the tropical cloud forests that dotted the region; chaotically mixing with the borders of more down-to-Earth (or whatever planet you hail from) rainforests, and the more dull and quiet mountain forest regions slightly further to the north. Even further beyond that was a lighter forest, with less distinct attributes as that of the cloud, rain, or mountain forests, and was eventually bordered to the north by a beach. 

Perhaps it was this fog that kept her mind so much more focused on forests that was the cause of her minor sensation of being startled when the man behind her began to speak again. Her mind likely so deep in its focus that it neglected what was immediately surrounding it. Not that such would be a surprise, with how frightfully dull it is to sit on the outside of a temple that one knows nothing about. 

“You always say you don’t want to join,” the man speaks once more; his voice calm and soft to some degree, but his age had taken its toll on his body and indeed his larynx had been influenced by the years; or perhaps that was more from the dust that he inhaled mucking about temples like this one. Despite this toll that age and time had taken upon the sound of his voice, it did not keep him from expressing enthusiasm as he had when he was a young explorer on Devaron. “I think it would be good for you to see what it’s like. You wouldn’t have to worry about not knowing anything, I can explai-” 

“You know how I feel in those places.” His companion interrupts him. Despite the rudeness in the nature of doing so, she seemed to have as much respect and politeness as one could have in such an occurrence. Reminding herself of the way her body always seems to react made it feel as if a gust of wind from within the stone structure; creating the sensation of a tremble trickling down her spine as an uncomfortable reaction. It’s been several years since she had entered a temple like this, however it was always consistent the way her body reacted as a result of her entering. Her skin would tingle, as though she had been standing in an anthill for far too long without realizing and the entire colony had come to coat her body; the legs of their collective sending shivers up and down her nerves. Her stomach would twist, as though she had sprinted between the explosions of an air raid being dropped upon her; racketed with shockwaves, sounds of screams and harsh deep bass as a result of the bombs, all after having recently eaten a rather terrible breakfast of overcooked eggs and an interesting collection of pancakes that had managed to be burnt on the outside yet raw on the inside. This, of course, on top of the natural stuffy feeling of having dust collecting in her pores and sinuses, topped of with an excellently unpleasant headache that felt as though her head was wedged in a very slowly closing rat-trap. 

There had never quite been a time where she had described, at length, every single symptom that she experienced upon entering a Jedi Temple to the man standing beneath its archway, and had never bothered to question why she felt this way upon coming on contact with such structures. After all, she could easily use it as a convenient excuse to not take part in the antics of her father in his attempt to inscribe the history of the Jedi in some absurd reference book for the galaxy to experience; instead diverting her attention to the far more interesting environment of the forests in all directions beyond her. It wasn’t as though she would wander through it when her companion would vanish into the shadowy stone corridors of the Jedi temples, but occasionally some animals would peek their heads out through the trees and observe her; likely believing that the stone structure was hers as she sat so stoically on the stairway leading inside. Some would likely even believe she was a stone guard, built to keep this temple from the hands of those who hunt such animals. 

They grey hairs comprising the beard of the older man sink slightly as the corners of his lips grow weighted; his eyes carrying the same solution of exhaustion from age and anxiousness from the experience such age has given him. For the first time since the sun had catalyzed the photosynthetic processes of the planet’s excessive flora that morn and the tropical-like avians had cried out to let all who could hear (however few) that a new day had begun, his eyes had drawn away from the temple he expressed a near fetishistic attention for and towards the smaller young woman on the steps before him. Her head was turned away, unaware of the concern that seem to fall from every wrinkle that time had placed upon his face. He gave a gentle sigh, doing his best to neglect her apathy towards his work, and running his hand over the top of his head to keep the few black hairs against it for the last decade he may keep them; attempting to elongate that time as much as he could, despite his hand’s attention likely only making the brittle hairs more delicate. He props himself against the archway, his right hand pressed on the tan stone and his weight resting on that hand as he prepares to finally venture inside. Prepared to note every detail from the overall architecture down to the lone extra atom of Calcium that was uncomfortably grafted unto one of the limestone molecules that comprised a room on the far left side of the building. 

“Honey.. you haven’t-.. It’s been years, is all I mean to say. I’m not going to push you, but keep your mind open. Maybe things have changed.” His voice echos quietly; likely being carried by the way the inside of the temple had been structured. His comrade paying no mind to his commentary, and he in turn elected to pay no mind to her lack of response. 

There was a small click just behind her, slightly to her right. Her mind willed her to turn towards the sound, curious of its source; yet something so enticing about the forest prevented her. Perhaps it merely felt longer because she felt the need to struggle against the inertia of her stillness, but it was as though she spent nearly seventy seconds attempting to move her head and eyes to see what he had planted behind her. Eventually, she did manage to pull away from her aloof focus on the trees before her. Drawing her gaze just behind her right hand, a small, black, metallic object creeps into her view: it was a blaster pistol. Its size seemed to indicate it was a holdout pocket pistol, likely not enough to do much damage if one were to simply fire with it, but enough that someone could be smart with it. Its size indicated it would only be capable of a dozen or so discharges before burning out until the battery is replaced. The shape of the barrel was odd; whereas the barrels of most blasters would have a diameter of about three millimeters, the barrel of this weapon was about one, if even that; it was difficult to tell if this was a design choice or a design flaw, as the structure of the weapon seemed somewhat makeshift or thrown together. The battery, for example, was mostly exposed; so much so that if someone were to shoot from the side it could be possible to knock the battery out of the weapon, and the feeding ramp looked somewhat misshapen to the point where it looked like some functions may be awkward, and it would be easy to dismantle if an opponent were able to get in close. As he vanished into the entryway of the temple and the shadows that it held, her father had only one remark to leave her with. 

“Stay safe, Zuzana..” Another series of rugged breaths rose from his lungs; clumsily formulating themselves into language among the gravely growls that each breath was lovingly topped with as a product of his age. He trailed off weakly, hesitant to leave her, but even more hesitant to force her into such a place knowing the effect it had on her. Leaving her with only a peashooter and this wary remark, he vanished into the stone corridoors.   
Her hand slid back slightly, fingers slowly trickling over it as if her hand was a spider slowly taking the small pistol into her web. Barely registering what she now held. Regardless of how much focused she placed upon the weapon, the temple, or the man who had now disappeared into the intricate corridors of the ancient building, it all seemed.. absent. It took her some amount of time to properly register the weapon that now rested in her hand, but immediately afterwards her attention moved back to the tangled woods; trees and branches creating a wall around the clearing. It was difficult for the young woman to discern whether it was more pleasant to envision the snug mingling of branches as a comfortable snug pocket of solitude put in place by some unnamable guardian angel in order to give her a miniscule pocket dimension in which she could escape from the frustratingly inflamed politics that engulfed the galaxy, or to instead see it as a social gathering of the trees. A calm and relaxing gala-like social event in which trees of all sorts from all over would congregate so as to mingle peacefully; similarly to her other imaginative substitute for reality, this congregation is unfettered by the war that raged beyond the blanket of leaves that formed the canopy that made each tree seem even more tightly together. To some eyes, it may even appear as though the forest in its entirety is a single entity. 

Intrigue fired between her neurons; synaptic clefts full of neurotransmitters wondering at the intricacies and curiosities of not only how the forest itself was structured, but what was the best way to view it. Indeed, her immense focus on the environment around her was what caused the forest to appear to her a singular organism, and yet it was this same focus that prevented such an idea from seeming valid. The knowledge had never exactly left her that between those trees, regardless of how firmly wound together their branches were, uncountable mammals and reptiles scampered about; hiding in foliage, waiting for their prey to creep unexpectedly into view, and simply attempting to find their path to the next light they would snuff out in order to obtain their next release of amino acids and nutrients. 

For the first time in what felt like several minutes, she gave a small blink. Interestingly, despite how long it had been, it felt somewhat as though that blink had no intention of keeping her eyes moist enough to function when it was initiate. That was simply a pleasant side effect. Instead, the movement of her eyelids seemed to be a result of curiosity as to why precisely the concept of the organisms beyond trees that comprised the ecology of the forest only occurred to her now. On a planet such as Devaron, the neglection of the local wildlife was something that was never found in those who made their livelihood on the planet. Whereas most planets would describe statistics such as this with the adjective ‘most’, Devaron was accurate in saying that there was not one person under its skies who neglected the presence of its wildlife, as any who had made such a mistake found a rather shocking reminder prior to their expiration. So to some degree, it was curious why she had been seeing the forest as its own singular being prior to such a reality being unweaved by her mind recalling the presence of the organisms despite having never neglected that knowledge with a need to recall it Yet now something felt more present about the animals; as though it was more than simply holding firmly onto the knowledge that they’re present in that forest and what sorts of animals inhabit that area. But it was as though they could bee seen specifically through the trees; her mind conjuring an image for her that seemed to spread as far into the horizon as her eyes would permit her to see, before the intensity of the sun’s light would do little more than damage her retinas; regardless of realistic her vision through the trees appeared to be. 

The easy recognition of what each creature was made the possibility that her visions were conjurations of her bored mind an even more likely scenario. It wasn’t as though she had any experience with hallucinations prior, but as her weight began to make gravity’s pull on body, and her stillness as she sat on the stairs, gradually more uncomfortable, she couldn’t help but realize that the forest and her own imagination were all she was really left with when her father had vanished into the temple. Admittedly, she had been left with the blaster, but as her hands around it grew ever more limp and the weapon itself slowly drew ever closer to being released from her grasp and falling to the concrete stairs, it only provided a literal version of her minimal interest in it sinking down into not even acknowledging it was there. She had never been the type for blasters; in fact the entire need for them was something that was just a bit absurd. Perhaps if weapons such as that hadn’t been invented and grafted on to automatic, self-thinking machines thirty years ago, then the Republic would not have needed to vote itself into an imperialist regime. 

So instead her mind gleefully trotted among the forest; strolling between the visions her mind conjured of local wildlife. Making her way between each, the visions sliding by in her peripheral vision as she passed them, felt as though she had stepped into one of the reference books she had spent so many uncountable hours with during her childhood; likely now drenched in dust as though they had been bathed in the ashes of a fire that had burned for decades before eventually relinquishing its capacity to continue. To her left was a small collection of hooved creatures, in common tongue they would best be described as being comparable to deer, yet Devaron’s more tropical environment did not allow for a direct evolutionary replica of the creatures commonly referred to as such. Scampering around them, starting at the ground and moving briskly around their legs and crossing over to her right were a pair or reptilian creatures; quadrupeds with very minor frills that held no real purpose, as there were already far more terrifying creatures hanging themselves from the intermingling branches of Devaron’s forests. Since she had learned the concepts of the lack of mercy omnipresent in ecosystems like this for the less fittingly developed for their habitat, in spite of her caretaker’s single-handed attempts to keep such horrid facts from her until he believed she was old enough to handle the concepts of expiration and extinction, she had believed that this particular reptilian species would soon find itself extinct because of the ineffectiveness of these frills. After all, they had a purpose several thousand years ago when wildlife had not gone so far in countering each other, but now creatures made a drasticly more successful effort to strike terror into prospective predators, and left this creature in the proverbial dust. Perhaps it would soon undergo a new leap forward in evolution. With luck, if the one she currently imagined continued to live then it would continue on to have offspring, and those offspring would have mutated frills or perhaps a more adept sense of camouflage in order to aid in its survival in order to produce its own offspring. 

She had proposed this concept to her father during her early teens, hoping for a thought-provoking exchange of ideas of the future of species, or the inevitability of their demise. Admittedly, the conversation she had aimed to achieve had served some purpose of her to boast her capacity for knowledge like this, as most of her peers had submitted to her that living with a father who owns a library was likely responsible for her abnormally high knowledge base. It could very well be said that her disappointment to her father’s response to the prospect was amplified by her expectations to flourish in admiration, but her disappointment may as well have reached its ceiling simply by how his response then disregarded her quarry.   
‘If they work together and stay determined, they can do more than survive.’

While both emotions would be present regardless of her expectations for the conversation upon the very first image of it being conjured in her mid, her disappointment to his dismissal of her idea overshadowed her lack of belief in what he said. She was far more focused on her father’s negation of her idea. Admittedly, she was now able to see that he had done such because he likely worried what it would do to the mind of a young girl, especially one who was a child of the Empire, to ponder visions and ideas of extinction and the futility of struggling against objective disadvantages. His fascination with the cause of the Rebellion, and his will to regain the former glory of the republic and the Jedi’s very own ‘empire’ likely contributed doubly to that; not wanting the idea of futility and submitting to the situation one’s birth has put them in to seep into his daughter’s psychology so that the prospect of fighting in spite of one’s small frills or one’s makeshift blasters would remain strong. So that, as per his hopes, she would one day stand up against the system. 

It was a wonder sometimes that she continued the need to remind him that the prospect had never appealed to her.   
Thoughts began once more to stroll through her head; visions projected unto her of various creatures accompanying her while she remains alone on the stairs. 

Yet as her mind grew more serene, aimlessly wandering among her past, a new vision briefly appeared before a sound tore her from her relaxation.   
Ions discharging; unorganized matter and photons exciting the atoms that comprised the atmosphere surrounding all matter taking the form of anything other than a gas. Pure energy compressed into the closest thing to matter it could become superheating the surrounding atoms into a plasma, like state; making it questionable if the source of this energy was, itself, traveling, or if it was simply that it traveled by igniting air in front of it, and air cooling behind it to create the illusion of movement. The sound itself could not be heard, in most cases, aside from the initial blast; yet for one reason or another the sound after appeared to be the most prominent part of the sound. It came from miles into the forest; carried by the narrow passages between the trees. After the second sound, carried by the ionization and superheating of surrounding gasses, came a second brief one; an electronic sounding pop-like sound, accompanied by a minor explosion and a very brief sizzling. Rapid compression of the photon-matter blend causing a localized burst of kinetic and heat energy that ripped through skin and burned off hairs; this particular blast sounding as though in the heat immediately following the explosion had cauterized the wound with the same heat that caused it. 

Had she the time to wonder, the young woman would take a few breathless moments to contemplate why exactly it was she could hear a sound that was so far away from her; especially considering her acute focus on what she presumed was an illusion of her overactive imagination: one element of her younger self that happened to be carried over when she grew into a more quiet and reserved young adult. Yet the throbbing of her heart as it jerked her veins inward with the sheer force of how intensely it pumped her blood; neurons firing across the inside of her skull, making it feel like electrical currents were reaching off the surface of her brain and trailing along the bone in an attempt to escape the inside of her body. Overloads of impulses and thoughts caused the sensation of being both suspended in stillness and in perpetual motion; trembles clawing at the nerves under her skin as the swiftness of her heart grew thin and weak. Flimsy as though it was a sheet of foil being shaken to remove any dust or dirt that settled on it before it was needed. She had no such time. 

Fumbling and panting, she leans down; doing her best to pick up her blaster and take it once more in her hands. The jittery motions of her hands and uncontrollable trembles seemed to do little more than to multiply the difficulty of the otherwise simple task; but after some time of her hands nervously scrambling around to lift it she pointed the tiny pistol directly out towards the forest. Even with the limited security she felt in arming herself, her hands continued their erratic motions; motions that only amplified as she attempted to clutch the metal of her only line of defense between herself and the blaster wielding hunter who fired upon the wildlife rapidly; taking down at least one animal with one shot. 

She needn’t use the vivid illusions that had portrayed the fauna in the woods moments before the blaster fire ripped her from to know that the poacher would be accompanied by armed Imperial guards; more likely than not Stormtroopers. 

It was no secret that the governor of the Devaron system would often do things such as this. He would use certain forests that sprinkled across Devaron as his personal hunting ground for some time since he had been put into power by greater Imperial officials. Most often, it was of no consequence to any resident; the few who lived off-planet in the system (unsurprisingly) held no comment. Hidden and buried between the grains of sand and ground stone of people who had not even heard that the governor treated Devaron in such a fashion, were the few ‘diamonds in the rough’ who, at the very least, knew of his actions yet still held no comment because it had no direct effect on them elsewhere in the system. For those who did live planetside, it meant little more than that the forests were considered similar to ‘private property’. Simply don’t enter forests that supposedly belong to the Imperial government and the locals had nothing to worry about, and this too was not much to fret or waste focus on for both the native species of ‘higher-thinking’ capacity (as they had so dubbed themselves) and those such as Zuzana, whose species had never held a historical place on Devaron aside from politics of beings who thought themselves greater. Those who believed themselves great enough to establish a galaxy spanning system of government, and lower it upon every society below them with no choice of whether or not they would enjoy such a system. 

Of course, the girl, herself, had not been part of such an oppressive movement of government. After all, having only been born twenty one years ago she had not seen the forceful occupation of the Galactic Republic as it perceived itself as such a fantastical utopian society that a minor trade dispute was capable of spiraling the galaxy to a war and their economy into a complete collapse. Technically, she had been present for the rise of the Empire from the well-earned ashes of the Galactic Republic, but at a mere single year of having drawn breath she had yet to comprehend the implications of a paradigm shift to such a grandiose degree. Because of this, the Empire, and her father’s patriotic ravings about the oppression the Empire imposes upon the planets it rolled carelessly around the center of its palm. A metaphor he often used, but was lost upon his rather uniquely unimpressionable child; not due to her being unfamiliar with the concept of a stress ball which was all too common among students alongside her in her youth who were incapable of coping with the idea that on any given day a mosquito like creature (who on Deveron held a stronger parallel to monstrous creatures that would rampage around cardboard sets in poorly made films rather than the harmless yet mildly bothersome insect that was commonly thought of at the mention of the word) could fly from a nearby forest, swoop down as though it was a Hawk, and, in a manner far more horrifying than a hawk, thrust a small, hollow, and organic tube into their eye and drain both all of their veins, their muscles, their organs, and their brain of either all or most of their fluids. The metaphor was instead lost because she had never thought of the way that the Empire treats its planets as though they were toys; she understood what her father was attempting to say when he would quote this idea like it was a favorite joke, but simply disagreed about the way he felt. Being on one of the Empire’s most prominent planets, she had never felt like the Empire held it so tightly that they attempted to squeeze Devaron of its individuality and its freedom. Ironically, the way that the system’s governor used certain forests as his hunting ground, to some, appeared more as a means of acknowledging the simply how stand out Devaron was. The sort of way a man of the governor's caliber would say that he appreciates the diversity and uniqueness of Devaron’s ecosystems to the best of his minute ability. 

Despite such thoughts spinning around her head during her attempt to firmly point her amusingly small piece directly in front of her (rather than directly down the steps of the temple, where her target would more likely appear), it was clear that she had encountered an issue. The notable point in the swirling ideas and anecdotes scratching at the inside of her skull in a desperate attempt to escape was the tensing of the word “had”—notably listing the status of the Governor's hunting as being no issue in the past tense. Yes, the way he hunted simply made it the equivalent of leaving most forest he would often stomp about as private property, it was somewhat clear that her and her father knowingly infringed upon this boundary. Luckily, the Governor, and the troopers that she was certain, had not magically deteced that she had crossed the border from more public areas into one of the reserves that were utilized as a hunting ground, so it was somewhat clear that she had no cause for worry that, if she were to disappear then and there, that they would follow her. 

However.. this would of course leave her father helpless in the event they attempted to search the temple upon realizing that they had failed to properly lock one away from the public, or if the Governor believed there to be an interesting quarry inside. As an antithesis of her previous plan, it was worth considering (in the event one either was absurdly overconfident to beat the 1,072 to one odds of even competing with a Stormtrooper with a handgun constructed in a garage, by a librarian, out of a melted and reshaped tin lunchbox with a few ion accelerators wedged betwixt the gaps, or they simply wished to lose to those odds) that the party of poachers would have no expectation to encounter another person in this particular forest. While their weaponry would far outmatch the unnamed makeshift pistol that pointed blankly into the forest, they could only react so quickly. After all, Stormtroops were simply bucketheads, were they not? That idea was at least what was often perpetuated by both Rebel supporters and the Rebels themselves—the concept that Stormtroopers are entirely reliant on their technology and while it is not as though they are devoid of proper tactical training, anything above the proper way to aim and fire (which as well is taken care of by their heads up displays on the other side of the nearly opaque black eyes molded into their armor) was reserved for the training of higher officers and tacticians. The source of this information however was the greatest reason that she feared that it would not be her saving grace when the Governor and his guard emerge from the trees; the Empire was visibly less-than truthful when they claimed that their military might was absolutely unrivaled and that nothing could compete with their military might, but that was no indication that the Rebellion was being completely honest in claiming such a lack of proper skill in the footsoldiers of the ever-expanding Galactic Empire. It was reminiscent, in some senses, of the infectious spread of rumors among the impressionable (and sometimes cruel) youths of a school. One child, wanting to ‘stick it’ to a classmate they have a distaste for, make an unsubstantiated (yet shocking nonetheless) accusation about them. It begins quietly under their breath as a way of venting their disdain for another, yet their compatriots find such news so shocking (or so amusing, at the expense of the rumor’s subject) that they move to shout it unto the heavens with an equally lacking level of evidence. Among the shouting and accusing, eventually the child the rumor was about to begin with hears of it, but at such a point the time to act upon such words has long passed; the original source of the idea lost among the faceless masses of the collective of laughing fools who nodded their heads when a companion said such a claim with no evidence, but refuse to listen when another claims the opposite with what the would-be listener deems a negligible advantage in terms of evidence. With such a poor weapon, and no experience handling it, it was clear that relying on the Rebellion’s schoolyard rumors was a gamble she had no will to take.   
Had she not known the fact that there are no sensory nerves on the inside of her skull, her next thought would be to claim that the sharp sensation of pain running across the left side of the front of her head was a series of neurons tearing themselves asunder under the pressure of attempting to make this decision. The adrenaline pumping into her blood seemed to rise at an exponential rate, increasing her heart rate by two one second, then increasing the modified heart rate by five, then increasing that twice multiplied by another ten to the point where her hands could not remain steady enough to even fire upon the same tree if she were to fire her weapon at any given point. The sharp pain was enough to at the very least forcibly pull her from the rigorous decision making process of infringing upon the laws of the Empire, to which the obvious decision would be ‘do not’. This sudden pull in turn, allowed her to realize that the complicated hurricane of weighing the options of how to deal with the incoming troops had taken in its entirety a matter of 2.04 seconds; having seemed to stretched and spiraled around itself; traveling deeper into a rabbit hole conjured only by the complexities of the thoughts themselves. Condensing the deep and worrying possibilities of dealing with Stormtroopers into a seemingly impossibly brief time, considering the fact that it felt as though she had immersed herself in thoughts alone for nearly twenty minutes without end. 

Realizing the mental and physical weights pressed under her skull by the strenuous thoughts of her attempts to weigh the better option, however unwise and foolhardy both were, she attempted to ease her mind by attempting to focus on the ironsides of her weapon. Of course, the very first detail either she or any casual observer would remark upon would be that of how the weapon trembled in her hands; the way she handled it was far beyond an indication that she had never pointed a weapon at a person. It was as though, either, the blaster itself in its entirety was a wholly alien concept to the young woman, or she was attempting to hold the handgun still with such an acute vigor that the pressure of her hands on either side outweigh the pressure of one, and in her attempt to balance it out and return it to its original position her other hand would push it too far in the opposite direction. Perhaps in the event she was capable of utilizing a weapon of a greater firing capacity then such a thing would not be an issue; her overcorrection perhaps even ending up a bonus to her as the recoil of such a weapon attempts to shift her from her target. However, wielding the pitiful peashooter (that she dreaded to imagine what malpractice was put into place during its production) now resting uncomfortably between her palms, such a practice in aiming would serve far better to decorate an inconveniently large domestic home in festive lights rather than to properly land a killing or crippling blow on a potential target. Particularly a Stormtrooper, standing slightly over 120 feet away from (and below) her. 

The next remarkable detail of her unremarkable handgun was the structure of the ironsights. While her initial glances over the weapon had made it quite apparent that the overall structure of the gun was poorly constructed and misshapen to the degree that one may expect numerous malfunctions should they not handle it carefully, this angle indicated a more apparent indication of just how much effort had been placed into the production of it and what little avail such efforts resulted in. The sights raised a full three centimeters above the main area featuring the barrel and feeding ramp, indicating that they were attempting to give the weapon a tactical edge by increasing how effective the iron sights would be. However, seeing as the weapon was constructed by an amateur in metal work (who would likely not be capable of effectively constructing a weapon operating by igniting explosive powder to propel a metal ball), the sights were unsurprisingly produced poorly. As they moved upward, the metal was curved and began attempts to fold over itself which were partially coped by lifting up the bits of metal that had drooped over but failing to correct the curves at the source of the pivot when they did so. This correction, as it was likely made by hands, created more uncomfortable bends in the metal that were more visible when looking at the gun from behind it and looking down the sights, as its current wielder did. They bent inward, often just above the curves that gravitated towards her where the metal had initially began to fall. The final detail about the metal sights was made significantly more difficult to discern due to the way in which she handled the pitiful blaster; the trembling and shaking that was a result of her anxious ideas of what would happen if the Stormtroopers were to push through the flora and aim their fantastically polished and expertly produced blaster rifles and drop her without so much as a blink. However, the carefully expecting eye, as hers was at this moment, would notice the detail that even from its base the sights were at a noteworthy slant. It was as though, supposing one would wield the weapon steadily and attempt to actually use them, they would notice that the sights closest to them as they held it were leaning to the right at a 28° angle, making them impossible to use to any sentient being who knew what they had stumbled upon when lifting the weapon out of whatever duskheap it was rightfully tossed to. 

Momentarily, she queried why precisely she had expounded so much effort to analyze a tool that she felt so troubled holding. Weakly, she jumped to the conclusion that she was doing such a thing to apply the most appropriate parallel to what she knew of meditation in a vain attempt to cool her seiring nerves. Justifying such a concept to herself took some rather intensive wrestling with the more realistic ideas of logic that attempted to overpower her desperation for an easy justification for her actions and a brief distraction so that the blaster fire from the impending Stormtroopers would hurt less when they lay eyes upon her figure standing in the sunlight above them. Her forced attempts at a reason behind her peculiar focus was simply the idea behind meditation; focus on a seemingly meaningless sound or mantra repeated over and over until the mind was sufficiently cleared due to its intense focus on nothing. While she had no mantra to chant or repeat, and there were far too many sounds among those of the local fauna screeching over one another to be heard in order for her to be capable of sufficiently focusing on her own breathing. It appeared to her instead, that her mantra was the view of her weapon in her hands; the sights as directly in front of her as such misshapen mechanisms could be was a simple sight of misshapen metal and blurred colors of green and blue beyond it. The only thing that added to its complexity was the way in which her trembling arms handled the weapon, which she presumed would be minimized if her focus would pay off in a way similar to meditation. 

The most absurd part is the result of her efforts after succeeding in warding off her more critical centers of logic for a more simple solution. That is to say, the mere fact that her flawed idea of a meditative session in the forest works to some extent; at the very least to a degree that her hands no longer felt as though she was attempting to remain stable in the face of an earthquake capable of spawning a title wave that in turn would be capable of consuming the entire planet’s land mass. Her hands had not grown to a complete steadiness, yet recognizing the fruits of her strenuous attempts of relaxation provided a pleasing sense of satisfaction. Had the demand for such taxing mental battles not been the impending threat of an encounter with an armed governor, his armed troops, and while on what he deemed his private hunting ground, the doubt in herself that she had expounded so much energy to ward off would generate a small chuckle from the depths of her lungs. Of course, with the former still remaining an ever present threat, no such expression had the room to so much as blink over her face with the notability of a singular neuron firing in the brain, and its reuptake inhibitor swallowing any influence it may have had on its neighbor; silently tossing it’s bottled notes into a void where they were collected and never forwarded to their intended receiver. 

Each moment provided a vision of her end at the hands of the approaching men. Their pristine white armor pushing between the underbrush, unmarked by the mud and muck that hung itself between the trees of Devaron’s forests. For one reason or another, the first several iterations of this display playing back to her in the realm of her panicked mind involved two troopers casually strolling from the trees with the governor in toe. For several moments they failed to notice her, however as their shrouded eyes peered up at the temple and saw the backlit figure of the armed trespasser and casually lift their rifles to pump her full of the ionized and essentially massless particles of their blaster fire. After some time of the looping, each time the blasts made contact with her skin in her visions her heart giving a needlessly uncomfortable jostle, eventually the governor no longer accompanies the two troopers when they step out into the open, likely noticing that there were some traces that people had made their way through the woods or that someone was standing at the temple and attempting to protect him from the potential that said person is armed. Of course she was, though watching her visions of every potential result of her oncoming encounter ended with the blasts of her meager handgun doing little more than washing over the armor of the approaching troopers as though she were to throw a simple bucket of water at them. Perhaps even doing that would allow for more, as if the bucket was thrown then it would allow for a somewhat greater impact against their helmets. Among the fiftieth loop of the seven second (at most) scenario in her mind, the troops had begun to stop stepping out from the trees and allowing her to begin the futile attempt to fire upon them with her incomprehensibly weak blaster. The trembling of her anxious hands began to grow once more; the distance between the location of her hand between each fraction of a second dramatically leaping upward from a few millimeters margin to several inches. 

The infinite scenarios of her impending doom flashed in front of her eyes, the blaster fire of the Stormtroopers leaping from the trees, red consuming her vision as she was enveloped in the (thankfully brief) sensation of being erased. Her heartbeat quickened parallel to her thoughts; eagerly accelerating to the frantic state of panic they had been in prior to her forcing a makeshift meditation on her soon to be wasteland of a mind. Her neck stretched, attempting to peek over her weapon as though aiming with it was more of a hinderance than an aid. 

The tension in her joints pulled at her tendons, thousands feeling on the verge of snapping and leaving her a quivering and aching mess on the scolding steps of the sun-bleached concrete. The thousands of intricate string-like tissues that moved her body and held her bones together tightly wound around themselves; twirling and tying around her bones and winding with a tension capable of suspending a bridge with a weight of 887,000 tons. Granted, this tension had driven aforementioned tendons to the point where a single extra twist would render their tension too great to be maintained by their miniscule tolerance and would snap into pieces. 

Of course, what would likely snap under such pressures would likely be her nerves far before the tendons of her muscles. Her body twitching anxiously and the movement of her hands more appropriately befitting a ribbon twirler, but the visions causing the most crippling weight to be pressed upon her skull rather than her joints. Her brain shriveling and throbbing in response to not only the crimson hallucinations consuming the borders of her vision as she could see nothing beyond her impending fate of being gunned down. Her eyelids ached and twitched; attempting to force themselves shut as she struggles against the compulsion of her body to wince in response to the doom she saw impressed upon her to release her of the mundane stresses of her mortal coil. 

A brief pause followed as she warded off such a distraction. A singular beat of her trembling heart rang in her ears in the entirety of the time it took her to complete her next action. A brief flash ticked in her eyes, rather reminiscent of her mental stroll through the forest that had consumed her attention earlier. A figure. A spectral semblance that rather than appear distant and bright as those had been of the denizens of the forest prior to the governor's poaching of them, was dim, faint, and dreadfully near to the panicking young woman. It was bipedal. Its head was somewhat larger than the rest of its body would lead one to believe. However this head was likely more a product of what it was wearing—the mirage making it rather apparent the figure had some amount of garb. At base it was clad in a fabric that hugged the contours of its body snugly, and above that was a collection of plates that comfortably surrounded its shoulders, its arms, its torso, and its legs, with vulnerabilities under it’s arms, under it’s chin, and around some of its joints as most armors do. 

The projection was that of a Stormtrooper. 

Her body began to move without her; her mind still spinning at the mere prospect of the apparition appearing before her let alone the questions that she could not resist pondering about its nature. Was this merely another projection of her fears? No, it was too similar to before. But what exactly happened with the forest before? She had presumed that it was a bliss and boredom induced hallucination, but as neither of those struck her now such clearly was not the case. Was it real? Why did she only see it and not the governor? Did she have the time to question such things? How was she able to even see such a projection over her weapon? Was asking such a question absurd since she was already capable of seeing it through the trees?

Was she aiming at it?

… Why would that matter?

It was only upon the recognition of the presence of this final question in her thought process that she realized what it was that her body had done while her brain was attempting to comprehend what it was she was seeing. In the handful of yoctoseconds it took her to attempt to comprehend such stimuli, her muscles had caved to the pressure pulling them in both directions in relevance to the trigger of her weapon. The force that won of course pulling her hand towards rather than away. Her trembling index finger had made a small twitch towards her, pulling the trigger against the back of the finger-guard; catalyzing the fusing of unstable ions in the battery of the gun, the push of that chaotic mess that could seldom pass for blaster fire into the barrel, and then the propelling of such a poorly constructed example of destructive force out of the front. 

The instantaneous moment that held her vision of the trooper was ended with the acerbity of a life ended by bring a blade down upon a neck and removing one’s head from their body. The sensation of the curved metal of the trigger pressing back against the hilt of the weapon ripping her from her breif moment of thought, and leaving the world with only two sounds echoing upward unto the sky and pressing up against the lowest hanging layers of opaque greenhouse gases which were the only buffer preventing such sounds from escaping into the infinity of space. 

The first, of course, was the sound of her blaster. It was the metallic equivalent of a sickly cough. Admittedly, it did carry the healthy flowing sound of the plasma-esc matter infusing its atoms together as the battery fires, but it was accompanied with an unhealthy sputter; the sound of the intricate contraptions of the weapon still eagerly spinning as they fail to lose the momentum they picked up as the blast was pushed from it’s barrel. The pitch seemed rather higher than what was most often associated with blasters.

Then of course the second noise was a scream; a push of terror and pain from one’s lungs as they’re nerves fire with panic and pain. The volume and pitch of the sound rose sharply, taking an eighth of a second to scream up to the sky before its source faded to silence, and the final cry of the unidentified Trooper echoed to the world so that the forest-dwelling creatures for miles were able to hear their parting gift to the life they lost.


End file.
